Re: Periodical releases

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> Date: Mon, 2 Jan 2012 13:57:50 +0100
> From: Carsten Mattner <carstenmattner@googlemail.com>
> Cc: monnier@iro.umontreal.ca, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> Don't wait until "perfection" and release trunk more often
> with bug releases if needed. Emacs trunk has never been
> unstable for me. I'm even using the NS port and it's still
> stable.

That could work, but it still needs:

 . a much more disciplined commit process, probably coupled with 1
   more branch (3 instead of just 2)

 . more active patch review process (currently, lots of serious bugs
   are detected months if not years after being introduced)

 . several volunteers to review and update the manuals to keep them in
   sync with development

You see, even for few months worth of development, the amount of
changes in the Emacs repository is so large that it is impossible to
release a dependable and accurately documented version without much
more active "continuous integration" style maintenance.  You may
consider it stable enough for your workflows, but someone who
constantly uses a certain mode that became broken by a release will
feel otherwise.

Now, a simple calculation will show that if it takes about a year to
finish a pretest of a major release, doing a release every 2 months
will need at least a month of pretest-style fixups.  Unless this month
is invested in parallel with development, 2 months become 3 months,
which then need 1.5 months of fixups, and so on, ad nauseam.

And without even a test suite with good coverage, how do you do a
continuous integration?

IOW, even this limited goal needs preconditions to become practical.
Volunteers are welcome.